Relation of Face, Mind and Love: Snaggle-Tooth Dilemma

Did you ever see Shallow Hal, the Farrelly brothers flick about a fat guy who's hypnotized into seeing women's inner beauty (and thereby falls in love with a fat gal)? Well, Lee Jang-soo's Relation of Face, Mind and Love is a dental version of that, substituting a concussion for hypnosis as the transformative inciting incident. But are bad teeth, the only shortcoming of animal photographer Wang So-jung (Lee Ji-ah)? She's also shallow, cloying, immature, klutzy, a heavy drinker, and one kitten away from being a cat lady. Why exactly should dreamboy/architect Kang Tae-pung (Kang Ji-wan) get over her snaggly tooth and propose marriage? Is she really the only woman out there who is willing to date an unreformed smoker? Or did his car accident cause further brain damage to be addressed in a funnier sequel?

Love is a mystery. And so his decision to end his superficial ways and take his beloved to a penthouse apartment with a view and its mortgage paid are never going to be adequately explained. What makes more sense is that when So-jun suffers a similar head trauma and her ideal is temporarily disfigured, she finds him completely unacceptable until her vision impairment is corrected. She's even unwilling to entertain the overtures of an elementary school teacher who is at once kinder, cuter, and more accepting than she is. She's become as shallow as her paramour. Perhaps they do belong together!

I'd like to single out the animal trainers for praise for Relation of Face, Mind and Love. The cats and dogs are universally adorable and the funniest scene in the movie involves So-jung being comforted in a park by a sympathetic orangutan. That primate could act! Let's hope he went home to a living situation at least as nice as the fancy digs occupied by Kang Tae-pung.